Святой Иоанн Берхманс: Жизнь и почитание иезуитского святого.

Jesuit saint

John Berchmans, SJ (Jan Berchmans ; 13 March 1599 – 13 August 1621) was a Jesuit scholastic and is revered as a saint in the Catholic Church. In 1615, the Jesuits opened a college at Mechelen, Belgium and Berchmans was one of the first to enroll. His spiritual model was his fellow Jesuit Aloysius Gonzaga, and he was influenced by the example of the English Jesuit martyrs. Berchmans is the patron saint of altar servers, Jesuit scholastics, and students.

John Berchmans was born on 13 March 1599, in the city of Diest situated in what is now the Belgian province of Flemish Brabant, the son of a shoemaker. His parents were John Charles and Elizabeth Berchmans. He was the oldest of five children and at baptism was named John in honor of John the Baptist. He grew up in an atmosphere of political turmoil caused by a religious war between the Catholic and Protestant parts of the Low Countries. When he was age nine, his mother was stricken with a very long and a very serious illness. John would pass several hours each day by her bedside. He studied at the Gymnasium (grammar school) at Diest and worked as a servant in the household of Canon John Froymont at Mechelen in order to continue his studies. Nevertheless, on 24 September 1616, Berchmans entered the Jesuit novitiate. He was affable, kind, and endowed with an outgoing personality that endeared him to others. He requested that after ordination as a priest he could become a chaplain in the army, hoping to be martyred on the battlefield. When he died, a large crowd gathered for several days to view his remains and to invoke his intercession. That same year, Phillip Charles, Duke of Aarschot, sent a petition to Pope Gregory XV with a view to beginning the process leading to Berchman's beatification. His remains were eventually entombed in Rome's Sant'Ignazio Church.

Berchmans took as his spiritual model his fellow Jesuit Aloysius Gonzaga and was also influenced by the example of the English Jesuit martyrs. It was his realistic appreciation for the value of ordinary things, a characteristic of the Flemish mystical tradition, that constituted his holiness. He had a special devotion to Mary, mother of Jesus, and to him is owed the Little Rosary of the Immaculate Conception. Berchmans was declared Blessed in 1865, and canonized in 1888. When the Academy opened a boys school in 2006, the trustees named it St. John Berchmans School. It is the only shrine at the exact location of a confirmed miracle in the United States. The feast day of John Berchmans has never been inscribed in the General Roman Calendar, but prior to the liturgical reforms of Pope John XXIII there was a Mass set for him among the section of Masses for Various Places (Missae pro aliquibus locis) of the Roman Missal which foresaw that it would be celebrated in different places on either 13 August or 26 November. Berchmans is currently inscribed in the 2004 official edition of the Catholic Church's Martyrologium Romanum (p. 451) on 13 August, the date of his death. He is celebrated by the Society of Jesus on 26 November.